Why was he going in there?
She stepped out onto the deck and headed toward the café. She was halfway there when she pulled out her phone and called Kayden. Maybe because she wanted to hear his voice. Maybe because she wanted someone to tell her that the watch in the photo couldn’t possibly be the same one with Macy’s blood on it.
But instead of Kayden answering the call, she got his voice mail.
“You’ve reached Kayden’s phone, leave a message.”
“Hey, it’s Tilly. This is going to sound crazy, but I found something in Pixie’s desk drawer. It was a photo of her wearing the watch.” He’d know which watch she was talking about. She opened her mouth to tell him she was calling the police, only to stop when she stepped into the café to see, not Jake but Pixie, standing by the back wall. A large painting had been taken down, and behind it was a safe. One that looked just like the safe that had been broken into in the other building. It was open, and there was cash inside. A lot of cash.
Tilly gasped, the hand with the phone in it falling to her side.
Pixie spun—gun in hand. “Tilly? What are you doing here?”
For a moment, Tilly couldn’t speak. All she could do was stare down the barrel of the pistol that was pointed right at herchest. She opened and closed her mouth, but no words came out…not a single one.
“Tilly! Answer my goddamn question. Why are you here?”
Pixie’s shouted words pulled Tilly out of her shock and had her retreating half a step. “I, um, forgot something so went back to the office. When I heard something in here, I thought you were Jake.”
“Jake? Why would you think I was Jake?” Her gaze moved behind Tilly.
Had she not seen Jake on her way in here? Where was he?
Pixie shook her head and stepped forward, gun unwavering. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, you shouldn’t have come in here.”
“It was you,” she whispered. “You stole from the safe in the office.”
“I guess it’s too late for me to deny it. Yeah, it was me.”
“Why?”
“Why?” The word almost sounded manic from the other woman’s lips. “Because cancer took everything from my father, both physically and financially. It took everything frombothof us. I helped him pay his medical bills, and now I havenothing. I don’t have my father. I don’t have money to get out of this godforsaken town, where he’s everywhere I look. I deserve more than working in a place like this. And when he died, I decided that if no one was going to give it to me, I was going to take it.”
And she couldn’t have just worked hard to save up to leave, like other people? “You killed Macy.”
“I didn’t want to. The woman came into the office and saw what I was doing. She was going to call the police. I told her not to, but she’d already pulled her phone out! All I had was a knife, so I pulled it out and told her to drop the phone. She ran. I chased her.”
“And you stabbed her to death.”
“When you see your future about to disappear, you do what you have to do to survive.”
She shook her head. No…most people drew a line at murder. “You tried to frame me.”
Pixie lifted a shoulder like it was no big deal. “People in this town already hate you. Your father stole from everyone, so I assumed people wouldn’t bat an eye at the idea of you stealing from the safe in the visitors center.”
Only, she hadn’t been counting on Kayden’s belief in her. On Eastern doing what was right.
Tilly’s gaze rose to the safe behind her. “How did you know about these safes?”
She still couldn’t believe there was a second one. Where had they come from? Where was the money from?
“Linda wasalwaysforgetting things. Work with her as long asIdid, and you realize the woman has early-onset dementia. I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t even remember the first safe existed.”
Tilly frowned. “So the money was hers?”
“She got a huge life insurance payout when her husband died. She confided in me one day that she didn’t trust banks and was splitting the money into two safes right here on the center’s property. I thought it was fucking weird, but, hey, that was Linda. I knew where the first safe was, but not the second. I searched this place high and low but never found it, until yesterday, it finally dawned on me. If it wasn’t in the foyer, your office, or the eco center…maybe it was here, in the café.”
God, all this time, this woman had known Linda held a huge sum of money in this center, and all she wanted was to take it for herself. “How did you know the code?”
